Police patrol a good chance to hear concerns from officers

Given the lack of rain it was incredible that there were any entries at all at the Shoreham Horticultural Society Summer Show last week. But, as usual, the standard of the blooms was spectacular and always puts my garden to shame.

My modest entries from the vegetable patch did surprisingly well and I picked up a few firsts, the sparrow shield for my vegetable collection and even a second for my blackcurrant jam. I knew I should have added more cassis to it!

This year's pensioners' fair in Worthing will be moving from the Guildbourne Centre to the Montague Quarter

Perhaps I am becoming a bit too obsessed, as my wife claims when I ban any picking of vegetables without my approval in the run up to the show.

Tim Loughton

I went out on patrol recently with some of our local police, as I like to do on a regular basis to see what is going well and what is not and hear from officers at first-hand about their concerns.

It is also helpful with my work on the Home Affairs Select Committee where we are carrying out a long-term review into the state of modern policing and the new challenges we face from online fraud to radicalisation threats. As usual it was not a particularly eventful evening and I was told I should have been here the week before when it all kicked off.

Interestingly though we were called out to a number of cases involving mental illness where it was clearly more a matter for medics than police, yet the latter inevitably turn out to be the first port of call and an ambulance cannot turn up until the police have signalled the all clear.

In Sussex we pioneered a scheme where community psychiatric nurses go on patrol with police officers so they can offer a clinical response when appropriate. I have seen how well it works but clearly this is a greater problem than resources suggest.

The summer recess is a good time to catch up on the constituency events that we just cannot find time for when Parliament is sitting.

It was fascinating therefore to be invited to a meeting of the Strive Group, which meets on Tuesdays at the East Worthing Community Centre, to act as a support group for people with chronic long-term conditions.

The well-attended meeting gave me a lot of accounts of the challenges people face, not least with the benefits system which will be useful when challenging our local service and ministers about how it could be more ‘user friendly’.

I am pleased to report that we have a new home for the pensioners’ fair this year, the empty shop in the Montague Quarter in Worthing, which was the successful location for the pop-up art exhibition earlier in the summer.

This will be held on Friday, September 7, between 10.30am and 1pm, and I will provide details later in the month.

• If you would like to get in touch with me, please write to me at the House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA, or email me at loughtont@parliament.uk

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